Michelle Obama Visits Remnants of Prague's Decimated Jewish Community

PRAGUE -- Joined by senior White House aides and Members of the Tribe Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, First Lady Michelle Obama toured Jewish areas of the Czech Republic today: the Pinkas Synagogue, the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Old New Synagogue in Prague's Jewish Quarter. They were joined by Secret Service agents wearing disposable felt yarmulkes.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, more than 250,000 Czechoslovakian Jews perished in the Holocaust, with more than 60 synagogues destroyed. The reason the Jewish area of Prague remains is because Adolph Hitler decided to preserve both the Jewish Museum and the entire Jewish Quarter as the "Museum of an Extinct Race."

The Virtual Library says 356,830 Jews lived in the country before the Holocaust. In 2006, the Czech Republic was home to an estimated 6,000 Jews.

Michaela Sideberg, the visual arts curator of the Jewish Museum, led the First Lady on much of the tour, which was described as being rather somber. On the walls of Pinkas Synagogue are inscribed more than 77,000 names of Holocaust victims from the area.

The tradition is for visitors to leave on Lowe's grave a small piece of paper on which is written a secret wish, and Sideberg says Michelle Obama followed tradition.šek Bányai, President of the Jewish Community Prague, and Chief Rabbi Karol Sidon -- and was given a glass Kiddush cup.